Andrea/Duck Dodgers here. I friendly welcome every fan of animation at my blog. The goal is to support the love and rediscovery of Classic Theatrical Cartoons from the Golden Age of Animation, keeping meanwhile an eye on Golden Age "Funny Animals" Comics as well as on modern animated productions! Every SUPPRESSED ethnic caricature to be sometimes presented here is just for HISTORICAL and EDUCATIONAL purpose and NOT to offend anyone. Stay Tooned and Enjoy the place !

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Cartoon of the Month: "Scrap Happy Daffy"

This month's cartoon is Frank Tashlin's WWII classic "Scrap Happy Daffy", which is, in my opinion, one of the best WWII-themed WB cartoons, as well as one of the greatest examples of Tashlin's directorial skills.For this reason, I think it would have made a nice addition to the already excellent Tashlin disc featured in this year's Looney Tunes Golden Collection. If the inclusion of a future wartime disc would be planned, I'd love to see this cartoon on it!And now, on to the cartoon itself!(By the way, the one to post the exact lines of the first song number, with all the names of the objects that Daffy mentions at a speeded voice, will win the Rock of Gibraltar delivered personally by my friend Duck Dodgers! :P)

4 Comments:

More than any other studio at the time, the Warners artists liked to experiment with their layout and background art. Now, I'm sure that the decision to render the backgrounds in mostly flat colors with details indicated mainly in line was, first and foremost, a financial one, but the results give this cartoon an amazingly modern look.(WB did almost everything that UPA was credited for ten years later)

It's a shame this one wasn't in color, but in the early forties WB was saving money by only filming the Merrie Melodies in color. Consequently, some of Tashlin and Clampett's best stuff rarely gets seen in its original form. When I was young, way back in the 70s, some bonehead at WB took all these black and white masterpieces and had them retraced and repainted by a studio in Korea-badly. They then released them in a syndicated package as "The Porky Pig Show" as brand new Looney Tunes. To further confuse youngsters in the audience, they slapped the then current WB-7Arts logo that went on all those awful Daffy/Speedy cartoons that still played in the theatres. As a result, my first exposure to the WB work of Tashlin and Clampett was in the form of those retraced versions with the jerky animation and the misalligned backgrounds (I don't think Scrap Happy Daffy was one of them) and for years, until my eyes were opened, and I actually got to see copies of the original prints, I thought they were both a couple of hacks.